Fender Introduces American Standard Jaguar Bass

Fender is adding a Jaguar model to their American Standard bass lineup, which will be the first U.S.-made Jaguar bass. Built in their Corona, California plant, the American Standard Jaguar Bass will be built with an alder body finished in 3-color Sunburst, Olympic White, Black, or Mystic Red.

Each bass will be loaded with a P/J pickup configuration consisting of a Precision pickup made with alnico 5 magnets and a Jazz Bass bridge pickup made with ceramic bar magnets with hex-screw pole pieces. Similar to the Jaguar style, it has many tonal options thanks to active/passive electronics with the Jaguar’s recognizable control layout. The lower control plate holds the master volume and tone knobs, while the upper plate has an active/passive slide switch and thumb wheels for treble and bass boost or cuts. The third control plate has switches to turn each pickup on or off and a switch to toggle series or parallel modes when both pickups are on.

Fender fits the bass with High-Mass Vintage bridges with the option for top loading or string-through-body and their “F” lightweight vintage-paddle tuning machines. Other features include a maple neck, 9.5”-radius rosewood fingerboard with pearloid block inlays, and a stealth “A” string retainer.

The Fender American Standard Jaguar Bass is shipping soon with a street price around $1,499.

I love the shape and the pups, but what I’ve never liked about the Jaguar is that it has too many switches… It looks line a plane cockpit… Just give me a tone and a volume for each pickup and that’s it.

I’ve always loved the Jaguar body shape. I think it’s very cool that this model has gotten popular enough that they’re making an American Standard version. A fretless version of this would be a killer instrument – I’d probably have to buy one!

Wanna bet? I have a Fender P-bass clone (a pawn shop buy) that I put a high-mass bridge on and added chrome flatwounds…OMG! I prefer it over the T-Bird…If I ever had the chance, I’d take the Jaguar bass over the T-Bird.

As someone who has one of the first run of the CIJ and has changed everything but the neck and body, I can say that they are wonderful basses and hopefully the American series will save people a lot of work/time. Aside from the high mass bridge and the P configuration in the front pickup, I can’t see any difference that would make this worth $800 more than I bought mine for. Between the Fender 60’s Custom Shop Jazz pickups, custom chrome mirror pick guard, Badass II bridge, all new electronics/wiring (to fix the grounding/hum issue the CIJ models have), Telecaster Bass knobs, and bone nut, I’ve invested about $700 in mine but it looks like this:

Hey Kurt…
So you invested $700 to bring your CIJ “up to snuff”…so did this include your labor time and the hassles? Seems to me if the American solves all the issues it would be well worth the $800 price upgrade…just sayin’. :)

I did the labor myself and I feel like she and I really got to know each other ;) The hassle was dealing with the loud buzz/grounding issue that they were infamous for. I hope that the Americans are all fixed and worth it, and until then I’ve got a gorgeous matching headstock.